Ubuntu 12.04 Beta 1 - Seven New Features

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Eager for an early taste of Ubuntu Linux's new Head-Up Display? This is the place to check it out.

Exactly three months after the first alpha version of Ubuntu Linux 12.04 “Precise Pangolin” made its debut, the project's developers on Thursday launched the first beta release of the operating system.

As a Long Term Support release, Ubuntu 12.04 is a particularly important iteration of Canonical's Linux distribution. Just one more beta version of the free and open source software is scheduled--with an arrival date of March 29--before the launch of the final release on April 26.

“The team has been hard at work throughout this cycle, introducing new features and fixing bugs,” wrote Kate Stewart, Canonical's Ubuntu Release Manager, in an announcement on Thursday.

Among the new changes included in this first beta version are a feature enabling considerable power savings and a new CD image size of 703MB “to squeeze in every bit of package goodness we can on the installation CD images,” Stewart added.

Designed for testing purposes, Ubuntu 12.04 Beta 1 can now be downloaded from the project's site. Here's a quick rundown of some of the release's key highlights.

1. A Taste of HUD

As hinted by Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth in late January, Ubuntu's new “Head-Up Display,” or “HUD,” interface makes its debut in this beta version. Dubbed as “a new way to quickly search and access any desktop application’s and indicator’s menu,” HUD can be accessed by pressing the Alt key and typing in a description of what you want to do. The software will then return a set of corresponding entries, including some fuzzy matching, the project team says. Over time, it also learns from your previous choices to make the search more and more accurate, they note.

2. Unity Tweaks

Ubuntu's Unity interface has been nothing if not controversial, but in this new release, the "Appearance" panel in the software's system settings lets you more easily configure some properties of Unity. For bookmark users, the Unity launcher now also includes Nautilus quicklist support.

3. ClickPad Support

Ubuntu 12.04 now includes support for ClickPads, or trackpads on which the physical button is integrated into the trackpad surface. Most Synaptics ClickPads are recognized out of the box in this new release, as are Apple MacBook trackpads. Coming in Ubuntu's next release will be support for Apple Magic Trackpads and more Synaptics brand devices, the Ubuntu team says.

4. Power Savings

For the aforementioned power savings, RC6--the technology that allows GPUs to go into a very low power consumption state when the GPU is idle--is now enabled by default for Sandy Bridge systems. The result can be improvements of between 40 and 60 percent in power usage under idle loads, the developers say.

5. LibreOffice 3.5 and Rhythmbox

Among the default applications in Ubuntu 12.04 are the newly updated LibreOffice 3.5 as well as Rhythmbox as the default music player.

6. Better Language Support

When users install new software through the Ubuntu Software Center, the corresponding language support packages--including translations and spell check modules--are now installed automatically as well, thus eliminating the need to open "Language Support" after installing new software.

7. A Fresh Kernel

Finally, upgrading from the second alpha release of Precise Pangolin, this new beta version includes the 3.2.0-17.27 Ubuntu kernel, which is based on version 3.2.6 of the upstream stable Linux kernel.

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[DKT27]

Ubuntu founder touts UI innovation in 12.04 beta release

Unity's new HUD menu interface being used in the Firefox Web browser

The first beta of Ubuntu 12.04, codenamed Precise Pangolin, was made available today. The 12.04 release, which is the next major version of the popular Linux distribution, will officially launch in April. It's a long-term support release, which means that it will receive updates and support for five years.

Precise will introduce some noteworthy improvements to Unity, Ubuntu's user interface shell. The biggest enhancement to Unity in 12.04 is the HUD, a new keyboard-driven user interface for accessing menu items. Version 12.04 will also bring better hardware support, such as improved power management for certain hardware configurations, and updated software.

Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth, who discussed the beta release today in a blog entry, highlighted the HUD implementation as a particularly significant achievement. He characterizes it as an innovation, one that reflects the Ubuntu community's ability to create a distinctive user experience that is competitive with that of other major platforms.

"For the first time with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, real desktop user experience innovation is available on a full production-ready enterprise-certified free software platform, free of charge, well before it shows up in Windows or Mac OS," he wrote. "For the adventurous, who really want to be on the cutting edge, the (totally optional) HUD is our first step to a totally new kind of UI for complex apps. We’re deconstructing the traditional UI, expressing goodness from the inside out."

The HUD allows users to activate menu items by typing part of the name. It uses a fuzzy search algorithm that will highlight partial matches. It can match menu items that are multiple layers deep in an application's menu hierarchy. The feature, which replaces traditional menu accelerators, is activated by pressing the alt key.

Conventional keyboard shortcuts and the traditional mouse-driven menu interface are still present in the Unity environment. The HUD is intended to serve as an optional convenience mechanism alongside the standard menu interaction paradigm. It works in any application that supports Unity's global menu system and is powered by the same underlying D-Bus menu framework.

The initial introduction of the Unity environment as a standard part of the Ubuntu desktop in version 11.04 proved controversial. The new shell was less flexible and configurable than the traditional GNOME desktop. It also suffered from rough edges and had some areas where it felt incomplete. The Unity environment in 12.04 feels more robust and better-integrated. The HUD is a nice addition that will help bolster the environment's credibility among power users.

Although Unity is smarter and cleaner today than it was a year ago, it's still got some major deficiencies. The consistency issues with the global menu that we identified in our last two Ubuntu reviews still haven't been rectified. The application panel of the Unity dashboard, which was atrociously bad in 11.04, got much better in 11.10 but is still a bit awkward to use in 12.04.

Users who want to test the beta can download the disc images from the Ubuntu website. For more details about the beta release, you can refer to the technical overview on the Ubuntu wiki.

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